Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Working from home can get lonely, so against all odds I've become a frequent user of Twitter, facebook, and online forums.

(By the way, you can be come a "fan" of my art on Facebook here, or follow me on Twitter here)

I've meet some truly incredible people along the way and it seems like in the past week they have accomplished some amazing things, so I thought I'd share with you all some of my friend's do wellings:

Liz over at Madeinlowell, creator of awesomeness, will be on the Martha Stewart show TODAY showing us all how to create her awesome eggs, which I am proud to say I have one hanging in my living room right now:)

Friend and fellow papercutter in the UK, mrYen, was commissioned to create some original paper art for a short stop-motion film by the same folk who created the awesome Amazon Kindle Commercials:

You can purchase the whales he created for the movie on his etsy site here:And finally UK Illustrator Extraordinaire Natasha Newton was asked to have her original paintings adorn the covers of the latest edition of Jorge Bucay's books. You can purchase prints of the piece in her awesome etsy shop here:On top of all that two of my teammates on the Full Time Etsy Crafters were approached by Real Simple Magazine and Oprah Magazine, but since that isn't a done deal yet, I don't want to spoil it for them, but still awesome!

Monday, March 22, 2010

You are now reading the blog of the newest member of the Guild of American Papercutters Board of Directors, the largest organization of papercutters in the western hemisphere.

I received word of my nomiation from Marie-Helene Grabmanm, the president of the Guild, about a week ago and just heard last night of my unanimous acceptance onto the board.

I very much look forward to being an active participant in the Guild's growth and I am truly honored and flabbergasted that I was even considered!

To find out more about the GAP, to become a member (we publish a quarterly magazine with new art, history, and news from around the world), and to see the work of local and international papercutters, visit their site at www.papercutters.org

Saturday, March 20, 2010

I get up at 6:45 every morning and start work some time around 8. Typically I spend part of the morning catching up on emails and The Internet, then I cut or design for people, break for lunch, then finish cutting, package new pieces, trip to the Post Office, return, email people who emailed me while I was at the Post Office. THEN sometime around 3:30, with 30 mins before my wife gets off work, I have this creative time that is MINE ALL MINE!!!

Well, lately that time hasn't been exactly enough time to work on a large 18x24 of a famous Boston landmark I started weeks ago and have gotten almost none of it finished, so instead, I've been focusing on smaller projects I stand a chance of finishing the same day I start.

Inspired by the creative geniuses over at etsy, including kfarrell, creater of tinysaurs, which I have miniature collection of, I decided to go small.

The wonders of the computer combined with the printing ability of laser printers, I realized I had everything I needed to shrink down an original design to mind-numbing porportions. SO, with a Sunday evening filled with Jen madly trying to finish a monstrous reading assignment (studying for her MA in Historical Archaeology- aren't we so interesting?) I dug through a bunch of photos looking for an appropriate idea.

I settled on a photo I took of the Chicago Library domed Tiffany glass celing during our trip to that amazing city last August.

I figured I should probably start with a size that made some logical sense, so I chose one square inch, popped the new design into photoshop, and Ta-Da!

I started cutting, and quickly realized I couldn't use my usual swivel knife as it wanted to move a bit too much for the delicateness of the design (wanted to twist and turn when I was cutting a 1mm thick straight line), so I switched to my usualy #11 blade/knife. Here's a progress shot:

Once finished, I mounted it to a 12x12 inch background to give it some presence on the wall and framed it up but good. Here it is unmounted and finally framed:

After completing that and getting lots of "oohs and Ahs" I felt pretty good about the decision to go small and immediately started thinking of new ideas. Apparently this is harder than it looks to go so small because I've had a hard time coming up with ideas for interesting, cutable designs. I soon thought of the world map, since I was working on the Continent papercut designs.

I had to subtly modify the map a bit (bring the two hemispheres a bit closer together) but in the end, I was really happy with the design, which measures 1 x 1.75 inches huge.

Apparently it was a really awesome design because it was on Etsy a whole 6 hours before getting snatched up and now lives in a great home in Missouri:)

Like I said before, I'm struggling to come up with designs that would both look interesting small, but also be physically cut-able. Here are some recent experimentations that I love, but I'm not listing yet as I'm hoping to do even better.

I am working on a 1x1" version of this piece, which now hangs in a private collection in London:

About 1/3 done as you can see

Okay, that's it for now. If you have brilliant ideas for microcuts, do tell, do tell. And, speaking of telling, I have some very exciting news that will be confirmed at 10am today, after the confirmation, I'll be back with a nice announcement:)

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Wow, first off, a huge thanks to Ann Martin and her All Things Paper blog for featuring my work recently, and also to the incredibly kinds comments that followed. You have no idea how much I appreciate it!

With that has brought a TON of new readers (hi y'all) so I figured I should, you know, actually write something for you to read.

I have a couple of upcoming shows I'd like to plug.

I just got back my piece from the Terminal 22 show, and the two largest (below) are now heading to a papercutting show at the High Wire Gallery in San Antonio, TX. Both are 18x24 inches.

I'm hoping they'll make a bit of a splash there since, as many of you who are familiar at all with the art of papercutting, these are just a little different from traditional scherenschnitte and wycinanki. Just a bit.

I'm also waiting to hear back from a show in Pennsylvania, and two summer art shows, one the Boston Ahts Festival and Art In the Park, a fantastic outdoor show in my home town of South Portland, ME. Did the latter two last year and had a blast, though the weather could be better for the Boston show this year. Fingers crossed.

I'm also finalizing a commission I received to make an original piece depicting the Massachusetts State House, which will be sold at the Gift shop along with prints of the original. Pretty cool!